Book: Gangway By Donald E. Westlake and Brian Garfield (1973)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times–1874–when Gabe Beauchamps, former Hell’s Kitchen gangster was ‘helped’ to leave New York by ‘Boss’ Twill. His destination, chosen by Twill, is San Francisco where he arrives penniless, seasick and almost friendless. Apart from Vangie, a ravishing female pickpocket, the only part of San Francisco that impresses Gabe is the Mint with its heavily guarded gold shipments. With Vangie’s reluctant help Gabe assembles a team of unlikely but unscrupulous associates to carry out the Great Mint Robbery.”

When it was released, the authors describe their book as the world’s first comedy-romance-suspense-pirate-western- adventure novel. Donald Westlake –even way back then- had established himself as the master of comedy thrillers. This was the only collaboration between him and Brian Garfield (writer of the original novel Death Wish, which became a huge movie franchise during the 1970s. In some respect, while Garfield’s book became more famous than anything Westlake ever wrote, in the end, it's why today in 2023, Death Wish is only really remembered because of the Charles Bronson movies; it had a terrific screenplay - at least for the first one, anyways).

Anyways, as well, in an interview, Garfield talked about this partnership: 

“Don Westlake had a blinding-fast mind. He always seemed to have on the tip of his tongue the sort of wonderful witty rejoinders that occur to most of us a day or two too late. In 1970 we got the idea that it would be amusing to try combining our strengths in a Western comedy novel. We wrote Gangway!, and it turned out to be quite funny, I think. Henry sold it and it did fairly well. But our ambitions to sell it as a basis for a movie didn’t work out. And we’d done it in a silly way—each of us would write a draft, then turn it over to the other, who’d rewrite the whole thing and give it back. It was about four times as much work as either of us would have put in individually on a book. So we didn’t try that again. But it was fun, and we got to know each other’s working styles.”

 

With that in mind, even hardcore Westlake followers could not tell who wrote what:

“You can make educated guesses, but here’s the thing–each man was well-familiar with the work of the other, and Garfield in particular was very influenced by Westlake, so even if you see something that strikes you as very much a Westlake plot twist, or a Westlake character, or a Westlake gag–could just be Garfield channeling Westlake. Less likely it would be the other way around, since Garfield’s style was still evolving at this point, but Westlake would have tried to make his stuff match-up with Garfield’s, and might have deferred to him more since Garfield knew this genre (and the geographic region it’s set in) so much better.” –The Westlake Reader.

 

So yes, it’s a comic caper novel, with a flawed hero (who gets seasick very easily). It’s very much a proto John Dortmunder novel – it’s possible he was writing The Hot Rock at the same time this was being worked on. As noted Garfield mentioned they started talking about this around 1970, with The Hot Rock being released in 1972. It’s actually not bad book; it’s enjoyable light reading, at best and approached with limited expectations because while Westlake was prolific, not everything he released was genius level of most of his other work.  There is also a sense that here at least (especially when Westlake steps out of his beloved New York, he seems a bit lost) that collaboration here, while fun, also show the limitations of it –that maybe  two heads were not necessarily better than one.

Books: Native Tongue By Carl Hiaasen (1991)

“When the precious blue-tongued mango voles at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills on North Key Largo are stolen by heartless, ruthless thugs, Joe Winder wants to uncover why, and find the voles. Joe is lately a PR man for the Amazing Kingdom theme park, but now that the voles are gone, Winder is dragged along in their wake through a series of weird and lethal events that begin with the sleazy real-estate agent/villain Francis X. Kingsbury and can end only one way.”

 

Native Tongue is another one of Carl Hiaasen's mix of hapless idiot criminals (who reminded me a lot of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder gang), burnt-out losers, small-minded grifters, and slimy real estate developers –which appears to be one of the author’s biggest issues. As someone born and raised there, who works for the local newspapers, he’s seen a fair share of folks who see profit in destroying Florida’s natural environmental beauty. Sadly, like many coastal communities, there are always unscrupulous land developers who get in bed with crooked politicians who are out to screw nature for massive profits. Hiaasen also uses the book to poke fun at Walt Disney World, who attempted, and was much-lauded for (though ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to repopulate the now-extinct dusky seaside sparrow.

 

Joe Winder appears to be somewhat a Hiaasen stand-in, a good guy reporter out to save the state. I can see why folks of a certain political color probably hate the idea that Hiaasen casts himself as the hero, but the writer has been doing this for decades, long before he became a best-selling author of humorous fiction. The book also features the reappearance of former governor “Skink”, otherwise known as Clinton Tyree. After giving up faith in the political system he now lives in the Everglades, where he always wears a shower cap and an electronic tracking device he found on a wild panther. Also back is Deputy Jim Tile, Skink’s dear friend and the man keeping him alive and out of jail. Both appeared in Double Whammy.

 

The book is funny, despite the seriousness of Florida’s difficult association with migrant workers and the exploitation of Native Americans and their lands. It holds together fairly well.

Books: Skinflick By Joseph Hansen (1979)

“Lon Tooker certainly fits the profile: big, strong, a Marine Corps veteran, and recently the target of evangelical crusader Gerald Dawson’s wrath. Tooker’s adult toys and pornography store on the local skid row has recently become the target of Dawson’s church men’s group and their destructive masked raids on “un-Christian” businesses. When Dawson is strangled to death by someone of Tooker’s size and ability, the police see a smut-peddler with a motive. Case closed. But death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter doesn’t like it. By all accounts Tooker is a softy incapable of such a crime. Actual evidence is nonexistent and assumptions many. And Dave particularly doesn’t care for assumptions based on someone’s sex life.”

Book five of the Dave Brandstetter series sees our “hero” at the crossroads, as his father’s death has left him wealthy, but bereaved and for the first time in a long time without a job. He has now quit the insurance company his father built and has struck out on his own as a private investigator. Add in his breakup with his recent partner and he’s a man unencumbered. But, as with any good P.I., the job always comes first.

It's a tight plot, with characters that are interesting and, as always, Dave's humanity shows through from beginning to end. Much like the last book, the ending is bit anticlimactic, but it’s a well constructed noir thriller that has gone relatively unnoticed over the decades. While the twelve books in the series have been reprinted in colorful trade paperback format that gives them a less kitschy 1970s or 80s look –thus probably more appealing, I guess, for readers who love the genre but don’t happen to want the world to see them reading a gay detective tale, the versions I’ve been reading, the Owl Books editions, are fun and rather weird.

Anyways, It’s the late 1970s and Dave may be aging a bit but he’s still handsome, newly wealthy, and recently in possession of a new convertible Triumph. Cue the cheesy soundtrack.

Books: High Adventure By Donald E. Westlake (1986)

“Kirby Galway may be a low-level marijuana smuggler in Belize, but the man has a dream—to make lots and lots of money. So when a local official offers him a back-jungle tract of land he swears would make a perfect cattle ranch, Kirby jumps at the opportunity. Unfortunately, he lands himself in a swamp—that he now owns. Kirby begins selling homemade “artifacts” from his property to American museums and witless tourists, even building a fake ancient temple and recruiting a tribe of Mayan Indians who know a good scam when they see one. But his cash-cow paradise soon attracts the attention of two snooping New York reporters, a beautiful archaeologist from UCLA, and a troop of Guatemalan guerillas just itching to shoot somebody. Kirby is going to have to talk fast, move faster, and pull out every dirty trick he knows if he’s going to get out of this alive.”

Westlake’s High Adventure certainly has a lot of what the writer was known for. It is a crime novel, because crimes are committed, people die, and there is some adventure high adventure (please don’t be fooled by Tor Books odd attempt to deceive readers into thinking they’re getting an Indiana Jones rip-off, with this cover) both high and otherwise, and it also features things Westlake has done in his comic capers, but overall, this book seems hard to pigeon hole. I mean, yes there is a serious side to it, also some laugh-out loud parts and a bit of social commentary as well, but a lot has changed in publishing over the last twenty years, but back then, those same publishers still like their writers to stay in one lane. Westlake, at times, deviated and this book (and a few others I’ve yet to read) proved that when it came to crime novels and comic crime novels, it wasn’t always going to be a black and white genre.

The genesis of this novel, also, appears to be when Westlake and his wife visited Belize in 1984 (he wrote an article for the New York Times):

“Being not quite an island, and not quite Central America, and not quite a regular tourist stop, gives Belize certain charms and advantages. Pre-Columbian Mayan temples and cities are an afternoon's drive from white sand Caribbean beaches. Dense mysterious rain forest and jungle gives way to flat farmland - sugar in the north, citrus crops in the south - and pastures where little white birds stand proudly on the backs of the grazing cattle. Decent accommodations can be found in most of the country, but you will never be in a tourist ghetto, cut off from the life around you, lost in a mob of sightseers.”

A lot of what he saw then was put into this book, including the culture clash between American profiteers and Central American natives. The question of which Central American historical sites and icons are to be preserved and which don't really matter in the big picture seem to be the main focus of this book. The drama is in the conflict between the bad guys and the good guys of both cultures. It’s not all travelogues, because it’s also a very funny book –the restaurant scene alone is worth tracking down this book for- and the caper works through most of the book, and Westlake has the talent to easily blend the lighthearted with some suspense. Like a lot of his work, especially the comic ones, it also features his patented group of men and women who are smart, dumb and somewhere in-between, in an adventure where everyone thinks that the other characters are something or someone they are not.

As the Westlake Review wrote: “It’s one of his foreign adventure books, and those are never his absolute best books, but they’re something he enjoyed doing, because he was interested in the world around him, in different cultures, different races, different modes of identity. “

Fun book.